Recruiting rankings are not the end all beat all. From '13-'17 recruiting class rankings here is top 11 best average recruiting rankings. In parenthesis is the total wins from '13-now
1) Bama (78)
2) Ohio St. (74)
3) Florida St. (59)
4) LSU (54)
5) Georgia (60)
6) USC (53)
7) Auburn (53)
8) Notre Dame (53)
9) Texas A&M (49)
10) Florida (44)
11) Clemson (76)
Lets look at the next tier
12) Tennessee (39)
13) Oklahoma (65)
14) UCLA (41)
15) Miami (49)
16) Ole Miss (43)
16) Texas (41)
18) Michigan (50)
18) S. Carolina (43)
20) Oregon (53)
21) Penn St. (52)
22) Nebraska (41)
23) Miss. St. (49)
24) Stanford (58)
25) Arkansas (31)
25 Kentucky (36)
I don't see a super high correlation with winning and recruiting rankings in the teens and twenties. As a matter of fact only OU, Standford and Oregon have more wins over the last 5 years than Iowa does in the teams ranked from #12-#26.
Iowa comes in at #49 in these average ratings from '13-17. Yet from '13-now Iowa has 52 wins and that is the same or more than 14 of the top 25 recruiting teams.
Sure we all know that the top, top classes of the blue bloods rankings means a whole lot. You aren't going to win a national title unless you consistently rank in the top 15 in the recruiting rankings. That said, you can have an average recruiting ranking of #49 and you can still out produce over 1/2 of the teams that are recruiting at a top 25 level.
